第170章 A Night's Vigil.(3)

Then,slowly and minutely,he went over all that had occurred during that eventful summer.He found a melancholy pleasure which served to beguile the interminable hours of pain--for now his leg and unnatural position began to cause very severe suffering--in portraying to himself the changes in Ida's mind and character from the hour of their first meeting,and it seemed to him very mysterious indeed that the thread of his life should have been caught in hers by that mere casual glance at the concert garden,and then that it should have been so strangely and intimately woven with hers only to be snapped at last in this untimely and meaningless fashion.He groaned,"its all more like the malicious ingenuity of a fiend seeking to cause the weak human puppets that it misleads the greatest amount of suffering,than like the hap-hazard of a blind fate,or the work of a kind and good God.Oh,if I had only waited till my Undine received her woman's soul,what a heaven I might have had on earth!She would have filled my studio with light and beauty,and my life with honor and happiness.Never,never was there a more cruel fate than mine!I shall die,and my only burial will be the infamy which will cover my memory forever."Then,with a dreary sinking of heart,his mind reverted to the long future before him that was now so terribly vague and dark.In the consciousness of solitude and in order to break the oppressive stillness,he spoke aloud at intervals between his paroxysms of pain."After all,what is dying?I know how deeply rooted in the human mind is the belief that it is only a departure to another place and a different condition of life.Can a conviction that has been universal in all ages and among all peoples be a delusion?

Then whoever or whatever created human nature built it on a lie.

This accursed rock has fallen on my body,and holds it as if it were a mere clod of earth,as it soon may be;but it does not hold my mind.My thoughts have followed father and dear,dear mother,and sister Laura across the sea a hundred times to-night.But oh,how strangely my thoughts come back from every one--everything to that dear saint who sacrificed herself for me to-day.--And yet I'm leaving her,I'm leaving all.Whither am I going?It's all dark,DARK;vague and dreary.Oh,that I had her simple faith!Whether true or no it would be an infinite comfort now.What did she say?--'I've found a Friend pledged to take care of me.'That is all I would ask.I would not be afraid to go out into this great universe if I only had such a Friend as she believes in,waiting to receive me.Who cares how strange a place may be if a loved friend meets and greets us.But to go alone,and away from so much to which my heart clings--oh,it is awful!awful!---"A man can't die,ought not to die,like a stupid beast unless he is a beast only;nor should death drag us like trembling captives from the shores of time.And yet I must do one of three things: